Saturday, January 30, 2016

Theories about Chávez’s
death, usually claiming that he was murdered, have been common in Venezuela
since his passing in 2013. Government officials have repeatedly claimed that
the president was murdered by his enemies, possibly by “The Empire” through an
unspecified form of “inoculated cancer.” Anti-government theorists prefer to
blame Cuban secret services for the alleged murder.

Yesterday journalist
Miguel Salazar, author of the popular column Las Verdades de Miguel, proposed a theory which rapidly became
viral in social media: Salazar is suspicious of the motives actor Sean Penn and
model Naomi Campbell might have had for their contacts with president Chávez.

Salazar suggests
there is a need to look into “the ease with which potential ‘infiltrators’ (infiltrados) could get close to Chávez.”
He has no evidence that Penn or Campbell could have poisoned Chavez, but
reminds his readers that the actor recently made headlines by “handing over”
Mexican drug capo El Chapo to the
authorities. Whereas the Campbell becomes a suspect for Salazar because “she is
not known to have had any other political public appearances different form her
meeting with Chávez in 2007.” Salazar finishes his note with a comparison between
Campbell and the WWI famous spy Mata Hari.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

As has
been commented during his annual report to the National Assembly President
Maduro delivered a speech that departed little from the government’s conspiracy
arguments about an “economic war” waged by the Empire and its local lackeys are
responsible for Venezuela’s economic collapse.

During the President’s
speech Telesur supported the arguments by repeatedly publishing via Twitter
these three “infographics.”

In the first, Telesur
informs about the “four main factors that have affected Venezuela” in 2015.
These, mentioned by Maduro in his speech, are: 1, the collapse of oil prices
and Venezuela’s source of income; 2, the absence of a productive apparatus
capable of substituting the “incomes of oil income;” 3, “the absence of a
national spirit of cooperation for the economic development of social peace by
important sector of private business;” and 4, “the monstrous attack on the
currency and the exchange system, and the imposition of mechanisms which damage
(vulneración) the monetary life of the
country.”

The second
infographic is about a term that is gaining ascendency in the government’s
discourse: the “Non-Conventional War” (NCW), which includes the Economic war. “This
type of war,” explains Telesur, “is an attempt to blame the government of
President Maduro for an unbearable and degraded (level of) life as never seen
before.”

Behind this non-conventional
war are: 1, the international corporations, including multilateral capitalist
agencies and governments of the international right-wing; 2, the government of
the United States, as the head of an hegemonic world domination plan; 3, the
imperial geopolitics of coercion (a directive of the NCW), materialized in the military
commands of the USA; and 4, border countries that lend their territory and
international political actions to the NCW against Venezuela.”

The third infographic
is taken from the Venezuelan Central Bank’s (BCV) report published hours before
the President’s speech. The BCV explains the causes of the economic crisis thus:
“Apart from the collapse of the oil prices, Venezuela is suffering from a new generation
Economic War which is promoted by web pages. These pages show an open political
will for economic destabilization, together with external meddling [injerencista] in the national political activity.
An attempt is made to impose a dynamic that destroys prices and stablishes
savage rules typical of speculative capitalism.”